AAPL, GOOG: Developer Survey Sees iOS, Android Holding Lead

By Tiernan Ray

Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi writes this afternoon that he has surveyed a dozen “leading” application developers writing for Apple‘s (AAPL) iOS operating system and Google‘s (GOOG) Android to answer clients’ questions as to why iOS seems to have more support than Android, to judge from the number of applications on each — 350,000 in the case of iOS, 130,00 in the case of Android, according to data he’s using.

The big picture statement is that it takes “45% incremental effort” to port an app from one of these mobile operating systems to another, writes Sacconaghi, which means, “platforms beyond iOS and Android will continue to be challenged to develop meaningful developer support.”

Sacconaghi writes taht developers said in the survey they found Android easiest to develop for, followed by iOS. “BlackBerry OS and Symbian were cited as especially difficult to develop on,” writes Sacconaghi. BlackBerry runs the devices of the same name from Research in Motion (RIMM), which Symbian is the operating system that Nokia intends to replace with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows. However, “We picked up some developer enthusiasm around RIM’s QNX (used in the forthcoming Playbook [tablet computer], while developers talked about a wait-and-watch policy on Windows Phone 7.”

Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) WebOS, which will be used on two new Palm phones and the TouchPad tablet, was cited as “easy to develop on,” a plus for HP, he notes. However,

Among Android developers, Sacconaghi sees the fragmentation of both the software and the hardware profile of the many Android devices as an issue. That’s not going to change anytime soon, given the various competing interests in the Android market that keep parties from getting on the same page, he believes. There are 15 different combinations of screen-size and resolution on Android devices, he notes, and five different combinations for memory specification.

Bottom line, the survey results suggest to Sacconaghi, “continued dominance by teh iOS and Android ecosystems.” But, “The most significant wildcard to this thesis is the potential emergence of code-conversion (common-runtime) tools that could deliver new apps to all major platforms at very little incremental cost to developers.” only one of the dozen developers surveyed is using such tools currently, he notes.

Sacconaghi reiterated a Buy rating on Apple and a $450 price target.

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